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| Twit-Twit and Joy-Joy, two precious girls in my neighborhood with very Filipino nicknames. |
Fa-THER, Bro-THER, Fa-THER, ‘THER, ‘THER, ‘THER. A
strange sound, no? But “Ther” is all I hear these days. “Ther” this and “Ther”
that. All the boys at my orphanage use this nickname to call the attention of
the Catholic priests in charge. I found this nicknaming so interesting that I
wrote a song about it (well, to be precise, it’s a parody of The Cranberries,
“Zombie”).
The Philippines is dominated
by nicknames, so much so, that one day, months after knowing someone, you’re
asked what their full name is and you’re completely stumped. Well, I only know
her by “A.A.” so maybe Angelica Anne? I used to encode family profiles at my
organization and I loved seeing the full names and nick names side by side.
Erik would become “Rek-rek,” Justin would become “Tin-tin” and so on and so on.
In my first six months in
the Philippines, I quickly discovered the prevalence of nicknames, especially
those that encompassed a repetition of syllables (“Moy-moy”, “Joy-joy”,
“Twit-twit”…I’m not making these up). Lately though, I’ve recognized a new
phenomenon in nick-naming. That from which “Ther” stems…taking just the last
syllable of a person’s name. Halimbawa (example):
Full name Nickname
Christopher -> ‘fur
Raymond -> ‘mund
Robert -> ‘burt
Remarkable!
Right? It’s just so interesting to me since in the U.S. we would naturally
abbreviate those common names with Chris, Ray, or Rob.
This
trend also appears in the local language where full words are abbreviated with
just the last syllable. Example:
Manong -> ‘nong (Older
brother)
Dodong -> ‘dong (Younger brother)
Personally,
I’m mostly just called “Larry,” but I do anxiously await the day when my name
is simply reduced to “Ree.”
